If Only
by Sally Mn
Summary: In the B7 universe, things could always be worse. And that's being optimistic.  Gauda Prime AU...


**If Only**

Things could have been worse. She kept telling herself, they could have been worse.

But she couldn't make herself believe.

She watched as the big, scar-faced man Vila said _was _Blake - who didn't much look like the man he and Cally had talked about, but who _was _Blake - knelt beside Avon and spoke in a low, rumbling murmur. She couldn't quite catch the words, but Avon gave a short, sharp nod of acceptance, so whatever it was, it couldn't be too bad. Probably about the rescue that was coming.

Things were bad, and the silence by her side was a cold reminder of just how bad. And it could all have worked out. It could have all - just once - have turned out right for them all. If only...

She stopped herself, and restarted the tally, the same one she kept going back to. Some good, too much _not_ so good.

Avon had been hurt... not too badly, no. No one else had, that was good.

The base was compromised... but they had escaped. That was good.

Blake and the ginger-haired, ferrety little man who was his friend had sent for help. They would get away, if with nothing but their clothes and their lives. That was good.

Oh, and Orac. That was... _probably_ good.

And now Orac - and quite possibly Avon - apparently belonged to Blake again. That was _not_ good.

And there were other things were not good either. Too many other things. The silence by her side, for one.

It was getting colder, and the small computerised heater that did service for a fire didn't throw out enough heat. Avon had been laid close to it, wrapped in Blake's big, tattered jerkin and a dark fur rug. His face, pale in the heater's steady white light, was oddly peaceful, and she resented that. He had no right to feel peace, not now, not when things had gone so wrong, but when she couldn't blame him.

Vila was sitting in the shadows, not too close to the small heater Blake had supplied, watching everyone with the wide, untrusting eyes of an wounded but wary rabbuck. He'd talked to Blake briefly, and neither for threats nor bribes could she find out what they'd said, except that people - some of Blake's people - were coming for them.

"And if we don't care to go with him?" She asked, hearing the sneer in her own voice like a thin drip of acid. Not that this - any of this was _really_ Blake's fault, but she had to blame someone, and Avon had made it difficult by saving them all. Shooting the spy, and being shot. Saving Blake, so that _he_ could save them via a small, old, ill-hidden passage out into the forest to wait like beggars for the handout of a rescue.

Vila blinked at her, too tired to make jokes, too worn to play up to her, spent - for now - of all that made him... Vila. "You don't have to," he said quietly, "if you prefer it here. Avon's going, though, and so am I. And we're taking Orac."

"Just like that," she snapped, though she knew full well she would go with them, what else was there? "You'd leave the rest of us -"

"Why not?" His laugh was short and sharp, an echo of the mockery he'd always taken from them, never given back. She'd found she didn't like being on the receiving end, and bristled. "Look, Dayna, look at the facts. We've nowhere to go and no way to get there. What happened was a shame -"

"A shame! Is that all you can say when -"

"It's more than _you_ and _Tarrant_ had to say for Cally," the words cut across her anger, laced as they were with frozen pain.

"That was -"

"Different. Yeah, I know. It always is, innit?"

"We have no choice, Dayna."

Soolin slid out of the darkness and sat down beside her. "_He_," with a jerk of her head towards the little red-haired ferret, "says the rescue will be here in an hour, so that's how long we have to choose. If we join them, it's for keeps."

"They can't make us -"

"They'll take us to their real base, they call it Gauda Secunda. This," waving a vague hand southward, "was just a front. If Blake trusts us with its location... we can't run out on him." Her smooth, contented-cat face told them nothing of what her thoughts were. "Not if we want to make it out alive. Blake's... more dangerous that we were led to think."

"More dangerous than he used to be," Vila said, hunching over and watching the scruffy, forbidding figure by Avon's side.

"He can't stop us leaving," she mumbled, more to convince herself than them.

"He probably can."

"All the more reason not to go. If only..."

"Yeah, yeah, you could build a world of if only's, but you've only got an hour to decide... no more." Vila shrugged, and turned away from them.

"And you?" She looked at Soolin, her friend, her second sister... and saw the answer in the large, shallow eyes. "You're going."

"Avon's plan went wrong, Dayna, yes, and it took everything with it but what we have here, which is pretty well nothing."

"We're still alive."

"And if we want to stay alive," Soolin paused, as if waiting for another voice, then sighed, "we have no choice."

"We would have had," she whispered. "That's just it. I _know_ we would have had, if things hadn't gone so wrong. So totally, hopelessly..."

"But they did."

"It's not fair. Not fair on _him_. "

Not fair on Tarrant, who'd also saved them all, who'd brought the Scorpio down, alone, and whom Blake had found in Scorpio's shattered hull... and whom Blake had left there, because the living were in danger and he'd little time to carry the dead back.

She would never forgive him for that.

Though whether she meant Blake for leaving him, or Tarrant for dying, she wasn't sure.

She told herself again, things could have been worse, but her heart said again, had Tarrant lived, had Blake brought him back alive, had they all been there together, it would have worked out. Somehow, somehow, they'd have made it: with no weapons, with no transport, no credits, no refuge, no Orac, they'd still have found a way to survive, all of them.

No, things _couldn't_ have been worse after all... could they?

**-****the end-**


End file.
